Hsieh Charged in Bribery Claim?

Frank Hsieh, the DPP presidential candidate, is apparently being charged in a bribery case. The Taipei Times gives the background:

The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that the SIS had reopened the investigation and decided to list Hsieh as a defendant "because prosecutors had discovered a lot of new evidence, which may impact on Hsieh's presidential campaign."

Rebutting the report, SIS spokesman Chen Yun-nan (陳雲南) told the press that "[Hsieh] has been a defendant in this case since the start, when the case was still in the hands of Kaohsiung prosecutors."

He added that "what you read in the newspapers may not necessarily be accurate."

Chen said that what prosecutors are working on had nothing to do with Hsieh's presidential campaign activities.

"We will do what we are supposed to do. Whether or not this will impact on his [Hsieh's] presidential campaign is not our concern," Chen said.

DPP Legislator Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇), who is close to Hsieh, yesterday said that he suspected that "someone," in an attempt to hurt Hsieh's electoral outlook, was trying to play up Hsieh's role as a defendant in the case.

In his defense, Hsieh told the media yesterday that his support group had received the donation from the temple in Kaohsiung's Samin District, in 2003 but later returned the money to the temple because it feared the donation might be "controversial."

The temple later insisted on giving the money back to his support group, Hsieh said, so he decided to spend the money on buying two ambulances -- Yu Huang 1 and Yu Huang 2, which remain in use in Kaohsiung.

A-gu has the interview from the pro-Green Liberty Times translated into English:

LT: The prosecutors' office revealed that Yu Huang Temple's (玉皇宮) NT$2.8 million political donation to you was made payable in five different instalments to a woman surnamed Lu. What do you say about this?

Hsieh: It's another war of words. The DPP has long had a standard procedure in dealing with political donations. Yu Huang Temple gave the money to Wang and then Wang gave the money directly to my campaign headquarters and informed me of it. I then asked him to report to party headquarters, so the money went from the campaign headquarters to the party system. But I found out in my inquiry afterward that one of the checks had already been cashed by my campaign headquarters. So I have admitted that my campaign headquarters took a political donation from the Yu Huang Temple, and the amount of the money has been verified. These comments do not make any difference.

If I can be frank, a candidate is as busy as can be during the campaign period. Who would have time to care about the donations? Kaohsiung City has 11 districts. We set up a campaign office in each district and there was more than one office in some districts. Headquarters gave NT$ 50,000 to each district office to pay for part of their expenses and each office tried to raise funds to cover other expenses. Some offices couldn't get donations, but that didn't matter.

LT: Why did the Yu Huang Temple (玉皇宮) contribute to your support group but not your campaign headquarters?

Hsieh: This is because of the Election and Recall Law's (選舉罷免法) maximum limit on campaign expenditure. The limit for the Kaohsiung mayoral election is NT$18 million. But would people who are running campaigns spend such a little amount of money? It's inconceivable. For instance, I reported my campaign expenditure as NT$18 million [to the Election Commission], and reported the other NT$68 million as my support group's expenditure. But I will still be punished [for violating the regulation.]

Huang Jun-ying (黃俊英) reported that he prepared NT$9 million for the campaign, and received NT$9 million in donations, bringing his total campaign expenditure to NT$18 million as well. But, do you believe that? I am curious about how [Taipei City Mayor] Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) reported his campaign expenditure, too.

Recall that the prosecutor investigating Hsieh is the same fellow who investigated Ma, and is a good friend of the latter -- Ma was the Witness at his wedding. In a western setting the conflict of interest here would be considered severe, but I have never heard it remarked on in either the press or in conversations with locals. People here simply don't think that way.

Hsieh is suing the pro-KMT paper United Daily News (UDN) for one of its editorials:

The daily's editorial also said: "If Hsieh wasn't involved in the bribery scandal, the suspected deep involvement of the city government's Civil Affairs Bureau director Wang Wen-cheng (王文正), a close aide of Hsieh, would make no sense."

Chou Chang-chin (周章欽), Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office spokesman said, however, that no evidence the office found could prove Hsieh's involvement in the scandal.

"Wang Wen-cheng was indeed seriously involved in the scandal, but we didn't find any evidence related to Hsieh," Chou said.

Chou added that the Yu Huang Temple affair is under investigation and so he is not allowed to provide any information related to the case.

Prosecutors discovered in January that Hsieh had received a sum of NT$2.8 million from Hsu Wen-liang (許文良), the chief of the temple.

Prosecutors suspect the money was a payment in exchange for Hsieh's approval of the illegal construction of part of the temple.

In response to Hsieh's announcement, the United Daily News released a statement yesterday afternoon, saying that "the two bribery scandals of the Kaohsiung City Council speaker and vice speaker and Yu Huang Temple are two issues which should be criticized by the public."

"The United Daily News' comments on the issue and questioning about the two cases didn't exceed the bounds of our responsibility as a social force," the statement said.

"We hope that politicians can all respect the social role of the media and protect the media's social responsibilities," the statement said.

However, Lu Shih-xiang (盧世祥), founder of the Foundation for the Prevention of Public Damage by the Media (新聞公害防治基金會) and a retired editor in chief of the Economic Daily News, commented that the daily's editorial was irresponsible.

"Reality should be the foundation of news comments. Writing news comments not based on reality is unfair to whomever is commented on, and would only waste the readers' time," Lu said.

Hsieh is suing them for NT$1 billion.

How much will this impact the election? Probably very little.

[2008 Presidential Election] [Taiwan] [Frank Hsieh]